The engineer at the helm of a commuter train that crashed into a pickup truck and derailed last week in Oxnard, California, has died from his injuries, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office.

Steele, an Amtrak employee who spent half of his 40-year career operating trains for Metrolink, was the commuter rail system's most senior engineer, according to Jeff Lustgarten, Metrolink's director of public affairs.

The train plowed into the truck as it headed south out of Oxnard the morning of February 24. The collision knocked passenger cars off the tracks and the truck burst into flames.

Thirty people were injured. Steele is the only person to have died as a result of the accident.

The driver of the truck allegedly drove onto the track thinking it was a roadway and got stuck. Authorities found 54-year-old Jose Alejandro Sanchez Ramirez disoriented and unhurt.

Ramirez was arrested, but the Ventura County District Attorney's Office has not charged him, saying the investigation is "complex and involves numerous local and federal agencies."

"The District Attorney must await the completion of this investigation before making a formal filing decision," the office said in a statement last week.

Sam Joumblat, Metrolink's interim CEO, released a statement saying of Steele, "the entire Metrolink family is deeply saddened by the loss of this dedicated, hardworking railroader. Everyone associated with Metrolink extends our most heartfelt condolences to his family, friends, and coworkers. Our thoughts and prayers are with them all."

CLAIM: "Iran not only defies inspectors, it plays a pretty good game of hide and cheat with them. ... Right now, Iran could be hiding facilities that we don't even know about."

BOTTOM LINE: Iran has frustrated inspectors and concealed aspects of its nuclear program over the years, but the country is believed to be in compliance with its commitments now, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Yukiya Amano told CNN in November.

Amano, though, said he can't yet confirm that Iran's enrichment program is peaceful in nature. He said, "We can verify that they are honoring the commitment that they have made, and we give the assurance every month, but the problem is that we cannot yet give the assurance that all nuclear activities in Iran is in peaceful in purpose. We cannot yet give the clean bill of health."

CLAIM: "Iran's Supreme Leader ... says Iran plans to have 190,000 centrifuges, not 6,000 or even the 19,000 that Iran has today, but 10 times that amount -- 190,000 centrifuges enriching uranium. With this massive capacity, Iran could make the fuel for an entire nuclear arsenal, and this is in a matter of weeks, once it makes that decision."

BOTTOM LINE: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made that statement in July. Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, clarified those comments the next day, saying the supreme leader had been addressing the country's long-term needs and not its immediate plans.

CLAIM: Under the deal currently being negotiated, Netanyahu said, "not a single nuclear facility would be demolished ... Iran's breakout time would be very short -- about a year by U.S. assessment, even shorter by Israel's."

BOTTOM LINE: The Institute for Science and International Security in February 2014 estimated that Iran's ability to "break out" -- to produce enough weapons-grade enriched uranium for a bomb using facilities it's already declared -- to stand at about two months. To 'break out' without being caught by the international community, Iran would have to enrich uranium at facilities it hasn't disclosed to the IAEA, and that organization has said it can't be sure that such facilities don't exist. Differences over Iran's breakout time are a key sticking point in the negotiations, with the United States and other world powers pushing for that period to be extended to at least one year by limiting the type and numbers of centrifuges Iran can use and the amount of enriched uranium it can keep.

CLAIM: Equating Iran with ISIS, Netanyahu said that "one calls itself the Islamic Republic. The other calls itself the Islamic State. Both want to impose a militant Islamic empire first on the region and then on the entire world."

BOTTOM LINE: The leaders of the Iranian Revolution ushered in a view of universal rejection of the West, but in recent years it hasn't clearly articulated the late Ayatollah Khomeini's vision for clerical rule beyond Iran itself. For its part, ISIS, or the Islamic State, does not recognize traditional borders and seeks global expansion. For ISIS, recognition of national borders is ideological suicide.

CLAIM: "Backed by Iran, (President Bashar al-) Assad is slaughtering Syrians. Back by Iran, Shiite militias are rampaging through Iraq. Back by Iran, Houthis are seizing control of Yemen, threatening the strategic straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. Along with the Straits of Hormuz, that would give Iran a second choke point on the world's oil supply."

BOTTOM LINE: A United Nations panel reported in 2013 that Turkey had seized assault rifles, explosives, detonators, machine guns and mortar shells that Iran had sent to Syria. U.S. officials have said there is strong evidence that Shiite militias are using Iranian weapons to attack U.S. troops in Iraq. Yemeni officials have frequently accused Iran of providing financial support and weapons to the Houthis in an effort to control Yemen's Red Sea coast, on one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

"Selma was a great, quiet, quaint place to grow up in," said Thicklin. It's where they learned to love and embrace each other he added.

"I call myself or we call ourselves children of the movement. Children of the civil rights."

Thicklin graduated from high school and Selma and left in 1982. This week, he is making a pilgrimage back home. He plans to take part in the 50th anniversary of the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery.

Thicklin said it was a voting rights march that brought America's worst nightmare to bear.

March 7, 1965 is known as "Bloody Sunday."

As marchers attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, they were confronted and beaten by state troopers and local law enforcement.

"There were many people there who's lives were brought to almost inches of death as a result of this," Thicklin said.

Thicklin said it gained national attention, which brought about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. calling for people to come down to Selma and finish the march.

The marches led to the passing of the Voting Right Acts of 1965.

Thicklin said our nation has made big strides when it comes to civil rights, but there is still work to be done.

While in Selma, Thicklin said he plans to shoot a documentary of the anniversary, so he can show can educate the younger generation about the historical event.

This pocket of 2,000 men and women constitutes the nation's biggest concentration of homeless people living and sleeping on public sidewalks, in scattered camps under tarps.

Not surprisingly, sanitary conditions are appalling.

This quarter of despair is now at the center of national attention for another reason: This week, Los Angeles police and a homeless man in a tent engaged in a confrontation, ending with officers fatally shooting the man known only as "Africa," an apparent reference to his home continent.

It was all captured on video by bystanders. Police allege "Africa" tried to reach for an officer's gun, prompting the police gunfire against him.

"Skid Row is a 54-block area that has the largest homeless number of individuals in the country," said Jerry Jones, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.

He's based in New York City.

"New York City has the largest homeless population, but Los Angeles has the highest unsheltered population in the country, which has led to the destitution you see today," he added.

New York City's unique right-to-shelter mandate ensures "temporary emergency shelter to every man, woman, and child who is eligible for services, every night," the city's website says.

But not in Los Angeles, where two-thirds of the county's 40,000 homeless people are unsheltered, Jones said.

So many live on the streets of downtown Los Angeles -- and elsewhere.

Land of contrasts

In some American minds, Los Angeles may conjure up images of a great American city cursed with an abandoned urban core.

That's an old memory.

Today, downtown Los Angeles enjoys a renaissance, right down to the new hotels and mall surrounding the Staples Center, where professional basketball and hockey are played, often to championships.

But not on Skid Row. (That's its official designation. Even Google maps label it so.)

There are few champion moments here.

The only exception may be the everyday heroes who labor in 107 charities and agencies feeding and comforting the lost souls bivouacked on the street.

The triple-digit number of social service agencies, however, is often cited as one reason that Los Angeles endures as the nation's Skid Row capital: There's a $54-million-a-year charitable infrastructure anchored to the poverty district.

Nobody seems to be going anywhere.

One man's fall and rise

That doesn't deter Ryan Navales, manager of government and public affairs for the Midnight Mission, which strives to lift people out of poverty.

His work and those of his peers is like that of Sisyphus to the rock, the mythic figure whose endless labor was to push a rock to the top of a mountain and then have to do it all over again after the rock rolled downhill.

"Skid Row has become less transient," Navales said. "The history of skid row goes back to a transient neighborhood associated with the railroad. The true definition of transient is short term. Now it's long term. It's become a neighborhood."

Navales cites a shortage of affordable housing as a reason for how "there's no place for people to go."

He asserts his agencies and others offers hope to those who feel hopeless.

Navales knows from personal experience.

He once worked for Microsoft as a network administrator in the 1990s, but he lost it all, including his family.

Drug addiction obliterated his life.

"After destroying my family, in and out of jail, in and out of treatment, I was living on the streets and doing what people have to do on the streets to support a really gnarly heroin habit," Navales said.

"In August of 2011, I was brought to the Midnight Mission homeless," he added. "I had a backpack on."

He now wears a suit, on Skid Row's front line, trying to relieve and unravel the nation's Gordian knot of poverty.